Columbia casts trio in Facebook film

Timberlake, Eisenberg, Garfield added to 'Network'

Columbia Pictures and director David Fincher have set the core cast for “The Social Network,” the Aaron Sorkin-scripted drama about the formation of Facebook.

Jesse Eisenberg will play Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg; Justin Timberlake will play Sean Parker, the Napster co-founder who became Facebook’s founding president; and Andrew Garfield will play Eduardo Saverin, the Facebook co-founder who fell out with Zuckerberg over money.

Production will begin next month in Boston and then move to Los Angeles.

Script focuses on the evolution of Facebook, the online social network created in 2004 on the Harvard campus, and how overnight success and wealth changed the lives of the classmates who created it. Eisenberg, who went from “The Squid and the Whale” to “Adventureland,” locked the central role as Zuckerberg as Columbia prepares to release his latest film, “Zombieland,” on Oct. 2.

Timberlake was most recently seen in “The Open Road,” Garfield in the Terry Gilliam-directed “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.”

Eisenberg’s repped by ICM, Timberlake by WME and managers Rick Yorn and Jennifer Davisson-Killoran, and Garfield by CAA.